Peer Influence VS Self-fulfilling Prophecy

It is important to be sure that we do not even slightly vary from what we know to be right and wrong - never second guess your own principles to soothe someone else. Doing so would cause you so much guilt that you would begin to internalize it as if you had sinned against them, causing insecurity. That is when people have control over you, that is why peer influence is so powerful, and undoubtedly, the kind of friends you have is so important!

You do not think anything about yourself that someone else spontaneously illuminates for you.

You cannot blame someone else's judgments about you as the reason why you feel insecure and lack confidence. Nobody can convince you to believe anything (about ourselves or other people) that you do not already WANT to believe. Those beliefs which you HAVE but cannot support with facts, when someone presents information, true or false, you tend to use it how your mind feels is best... to support your own theories about the people and the world around you, regardless of how erroneous they might be.

My friend, Barney, has recently brought to light a linguistic fact that bolsters my theory about thoughts: "De-CIDE. The root word 'decidere' means to 'cut off'. [As in] suiCIDE. homiCIDE. patriCIDE. To decide requires a death, and there are no easy decisions. In fact, simple decisions are best called choices. I Kings 18:21 Stop sitting on the fence - make up your mind right now, sir! Fences make you a repeat of the Humpty Dumpty case study."

As I have mentioned before, my own suicidal thoughts have been of this nature - wanting some of my bad traits to die off and other good traits to flourish. Therefore, it is a turning point, a decision in which you assert to ameliorate rather than negate life. Life is full of insecurities - those things you fear you are not good at, those things you are indeed not good at, those things which you desire to be good at but are seemingly not, those which you are good at but cannot perceive it, and those which you are good at that you wish you were not. No person can escape the phenomenon of insecurity, but you can guide it.

If you must be insecure, let it lie in not knowing whether you have spent enough time with your family. If you must be insecure, let it lie in not knowing if you have enjoyed life to its fullest. If you must be insecure, let it lie in not knowing if you have been a good person. If you must be insecure, let it lie in not knowing if you have learned all there is to learn in life. For these insecurities drive you to spend more time with your family, enjoy life even more, be a better person, and cause you to be more apt to learn life's lessons.

Never let your insecurities cause you to adopt the evaluation that another person has of you. Evaluate yourself based on your own ideals, principles, morals, and values. But who can evaluate themselves based on their principles if they do not even know who and what they are? Therefore, KNOW YOURSELF. This kind of knowledge typically comes with maturity, which is why we see so many adolescents with issues concerning self-image and insecurity. Why do we tolerate this? Educate yourself - know yourself - know your principles, your ideals, your morals, and your values - and then STAND on those truths.

Let others' judgments fall around you, but not fall on your ears for that would be a win for the Devil himself, in convincing you that you are not worthy of God's grace and, therefore, would not receive it. In fact, none of us is worthy, and that is the beauty of God's grace - He grants it to those who do not and could never deserve or earn it and asks for nothing in return, save acceptance.

What Mental Pain Feels Like

Why is it that when a person has cancer, we don’t want them to suffer; And when we see they are suffering so much that we know they are going to die, we pray that God would take them quickly…?

Yet, when a person is suffering so much mentally, and nobody can even see how much they are suffering, we try and convince that person to feel better and think positively about things? You cannot convince a mentally diseased person they are well anymore than you can convince a quadriplegic that he can walk. Thinking positively has great results when a person’s thinker isn’t broken. But what about when it is broken? What then?

Sometimes, the pain is so deep, the hurt is such a raw pain, that you cannot even treat it anymore with exercises that are meant to generate thoughts, medicines that are meant to dull the senses, and words that are meant to comfort the soul.

Why don’t we pray for those people, much like the cancer patient, to be eased from their suffering and taken quickly to Heaven?

I believe it is because, as a whole, society does not really believe that people SUFFER from mental pain and disease. If society really believed that, we would not want any person to suffer such undue mental pain, just like we do not want any person to suffer from cancer – whether or not it was self-induced.

Instead, society causes the mental and emotional pain to be worsened by criticizing the reason it even exists in the first place and attaching a negative stigma to it in general. Society causes the pain to worsen. Social conditioning that suffocates a person’s real motivations in life and garners a false sense of self causes the pain to worsen. Families cause the pain to worsen, the people who "LOVE YOU" cause it to worsen by placing obligations upon the inflicted as a means of showing that love, instead of offering them unconditional positive regard and nonjudgmental acceptance. The standards that people imply upon you, by which they measure the kind of person you are and by which they deem themselves as better or worse than you… cause the pain to worsen… and society justifies all of that.

Meanwhile, those suffering from mental pain just have to stay in it, remain a slave to it, all for the sake of allowing the uninflected people in society to keep their large, self-righteous egos intact.

Until you are there, enslaved, trapped in your own mind, criticized for it, and even neglected or cast out because of your deafening pain… you cannot know how disabling mental pain really is.

You can say that God can heal mental pain… but God can heal cancer, too. He doesn’t always heal cancer, so what makes you think He always heals mental pain and even on cue?

In the spiritual sense, it is not for you or I to decide who God heals and who He doesn’t. It is only for us to hope that we are not one of the inflicted, and if indeed we are, to seek His help.

I’m sitting here, waiting and hoping He will heal me, and all these years it has never happened for me. I tried to make it happen for myself; I tried to make life better for myself. I sought every means possible to work and make a living, support myself and my child, get a better education, get certified in various areas to gain employment, pay the various bills I had necessitated, make the right connections, take care of myself physically, seek help when necessary… and after it all, I am still enslaved but far more deadened than before, with even more pain, significantly more problems, and significantly less concern that I will ever be free from it.

There was a time that, when I felt suicidal, it was not that I wanted to literally die, but just that I wanted to kill off all the bad parts of my personality and character and make the good parts even more prominent and alive. I’m not perfect – far from it – but I just cannot find any large, impending trait of my own that I think is so evil; I am 300% better than I was 3 years ago – I am not the person I once was. I kept striving to be better and I made a lot of progress… it is like exercise and females in Corporate America, once you start working your way up, there is a glass ceiling past which you cannot progress. I have put in the work, where is the result? I just cannot keep living this way anymore. It seems that I have nothing left to accomplish… like I have tried every possible way to make a difference to no avail. I give up.

I want you to find peace without me, because I’m praying that if God has nothing else for me to accomplish in my life that He would just take me swiftly so I don’t have to suffer this pain anymore.